Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival:Sifnos/Bresson

by Vasiliki Katsarou

Sifnos by Henri Cartier-Bresson

An image in silver

of a Sifnos street can be bought

today at Swann Galleries

in Manhattan

starting bid:$3,000

There solid sheets of light

rain down on ancient

cypress

now cyphers

Beyond the sea

is another form of transparency

What art is there

to make need

of these elements

When sky is another medium

of light,

and existence, an invitation to love

within webs of blood

Once, Sifnos

had silver and gold

at the core

Potters, poets,

a treasury at Delphi

Hills terraced

like beehives

Then farmers, poets

and potters resolved

to sell gilded lead

as gold

and all the veins of Sifnos

ran cold

Centuries passed

the sea was glass

a Venetian town stacked

on the ruins

of this metropolis

The chapel of Seven Martyrs

set on barren rocks

has the dimensions

of Thoreau’s cabin

if Thoreau were Greek Orthodox

and a thousand years old

What need is there

to make art of these

Now that the stone footpaths

are empty

the child in the photo has gone

and Sifnos is a ship at sea

Yet the exhilaration of shadow

and vastness persists,

light and the odd sense

of loss

Just around the bend

lie

the immensities

of “let’s pretend”

Editor’s Note: This is the second in an ongoing series of poets we have commissioned to share their work in the pages of Wild River Review.

Vasiliki Katsarou will read from her work at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival – the largest poetry festival in the United States – on Saturday, October 25.

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Vasiliki Katsarou

Vasiliki Katsarou, Poet

Vasiliki Katsarou was born and raised in Massachusetts to Greek-born parents, and educated at Harvard College, the University of Paris I-Sorbonne, and Boston University. Her first collection, Memento Tsunami, was published in 2011 and one of its poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Daily, wicked alice, Press 1, and U.S. 1 Worksheets, as well as in the anthologies Not Somewhere Else But Here: A Contemporary Anthology of Women and Place and Rabbit Ears: TV Poems. She has also worked in film and television production in France and Greece, and written and directed an award-winning 35mm short film, Fruitlands 1843, about the Transcendentalist utopian community. She directs the Panoply Books Reading Series in Lambertville, New Jersey. In October 2014, Vasiliki will be one of fifty poets invited to read her work at the 15^th biennial Dodge Poetry Festival. For more on Vasiliki, please visit one goldbead.com.

WEBSITE: www.onegoldbead.com

VASILIKI KATSAROU IN THIS EDITION:

Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival: Sifnos/Bresson
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ISSN: 1932-362X